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231. The Hunger Grains: The fight is on. Time to scrap EU biofuel mandates.

Publication Date:
09-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
In 2009, EU governments committed to sourcing 10 per cent of transport energy from renewable sources by 2020: they are set to meet this target almost exclusively using biofuels made from food crops. By putting a mandate in place, European governments are propping up powerful industry and farming lobbies without spending a penny from national budgets: as direct subsidies and tax exemptions are phased out, the cost is increasingly borne by the consumer. For example, by 2020 biofuel mandates are likely to cost UK consumers between £1bn and £2bn more each year—that's about £35 from every adult—and to cost German consumers between €1.37bn and €2.15bn more—up to €30 per adult. EU governments have replaced subsidies paid out of the public purse with a subsidy that consumers, often without their knowledge, pay directly to big business.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Development, Energy Policy, and Food
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, and Germany

232. Climate security, risk assessment and military planning

Author:
Chad Michael Briggs
Publication Date:
09-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
The effort to tie together environment and security is not a new endeavour. The Epic of Gilgamesh spoke of floods, possibly referring to actual changes in the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, resulting in clashes over water access and land use. Stories from the Third Punic War (albeit of disputed veracity) spoke of the Romans sowing the fields of Carthaginians with salt in order to prevent the communities from rebuilding. Environmental factors have been crucial in warfare throughout history, from storms warding off the Spanish Armada in Elizabethan times to the decimation of European troops by disease during the Crusades. Later colonial powers, recognizing that the conquest of land overseas required also the conquest of nature, established schools of tropical hygiene and medicine to provide adaptation strategies for new environmental conditions.
Topic:
Security
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

233. The Future of the European Convention on Human Rights after the Brighton Conference

Author:
Antonio Bultrini
Publication Date:
09-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
It is widely recognized that the European Convention on Human Rights has led to the most advanced human rights protection system to date - and represents an important benchmark for several other international bodies. The individual right of application to the European Court, which unlike other human rights treaties is compulsory for State parties, is a unique feature and pillar of the system. However, the European Court is presently overwhelmed by an abnormal caseload: about 150,000 applications are currently pending in Strasbourg. Recent reforms have increased the Court’s efficiency. Yet the British Government has just tried to promote a new reform of the system. This attempt was not entirely disinterested and has led to an unprecedented mobilization by international civil society. The British move has nonetheless triggered a debate on the real challenges facing the European system.
Topic:
Human Rights, Human Welfare, International Law, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

234. Editor's Note

Author:
Sikander Kiani and Michael Brannagan
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
No abstract is available.
Topic:
Politics and Non State Actors
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Middle East, India, and Belgium

235. The Scottish Play

Author:
Charles King
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Foreign Affairs
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
As a referendum on Scotland's independence looms, the question of the region's place in the United Kingdom has become the most pressing issue in British politics. Its experience shows how a smart secessionist party can dismantle a functioning country, and how central governments eager to buy off regions can end up making matters worse.
Political Geography:
United Kingdom

236. Retail 2022: How the Economist Intelligence Unit sees the retail landscape changing over the next decade

Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
Markets of the future—China, India, Brazil and Russia—will become the dominant retail markets l Africa, the final frontier—as BRIC opportunities diminish retailers will look to Africa as a driver of growth l Virtual marketplace— e-commerce, m-commerce and s-commerce—will transform the global retail landscape l Bricks and mortar will fight back as traditional retailers respond to change by integrating online with physical store offerings l Convenience will be king as shopping habits evolve into a multichannel approach rather than “one-stop shopping” l UK focus: polarised shopping habits could continue even when incomes recover, leading to an even greater squeeze on mid-market retail by 2022.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, International Trade and Finance, Markets, Science and Technology, and Communications
Political Geography:
Russia, China, United Kingdom, India, and Brazil

237. The UK media and 'Europe': from permissive consensus to destructive dissent

Author:
Oliver Daddow
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: 'At the time, no one knew what was coming.' With Britain's main parties of government deeply divided on the question of European integration, the country's politicians have been reticent to the point of paranoia about opening up national debates about the European Economic Community/European Union. The national media, by contrast, have had no such qualms about professing their opinions on the merits and downsides of the European project and Britain's contribution to it. This article argues that on the issue of 'Europe' most organs of the British media have, in a variety of ways and for various reasons, been on a journey between 1973 and the present from permissive consensus to destructive dissent. In putting forward this interpretation the article adapts Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks's judgement that, since the signing of the Treaty of Maastricht in 1991, European policy-making elites have increasingly had to 'look over their shoulders when negotiating European issues'. This is because public interest in notionally European-level affairs has risen in proportion to the number and contentiousness of landmark decisions being taken at the supranational level. Crucially, there has been a marked rise in Euroscepticism across the Continent, with national politicians having to 'make room for a more Eurosceptical public' when coming to decisions on European integration, especially on sensitive topics such as fiscal union and constitution-building.2The title of this article reflects the specificity of the British case, where a seismic shift took place during the 1980s. Widespread (but by no means total) media support, sometimes manifest as quiet or just plain uninterested acquiescence in the European project in its 'common market' guise, has given way to a vigorously partisan hostility bordering on a nationalist and in some arenas xenophobic approach to the coverage of European affairs.
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

238. A high price to pay? Britain and the European budget

Author:
James Spence
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Shadows of 'bougets', in the old sense of moneybags, loom over Britain's stance on the EU budget today, as they did over EC budgets 40 years ago. Three of the make-or-break issues for the UK in the negotiations over the multiannual financial framework (MFF) for the period from 2014 to 2020 concern the direct cost of UK membership. The first is maintaining the British correction or 'rebate', while also maintaining member state sovereignty over budget revenue decisions. (The current rebate, some claim, was finally gained by another 'bouget', Mrs Thatcher's fabled handbag, in 1984.) Cutting finance to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the second, and closely linked to the first. At the time Britain was negotiating its terms for accession, its less Eurocentric agricultural trade patterns, and its higher dependence on cheap food imports from outside the Communities, marked it off from the six founding EC member states for which food security was a high priority. UK food prices were relatively low compared to Continental prices. Agriculture was a smaller economic and employment sector in the UK than it was in Continental Europe, and land ownership patterns also differed markedly. The third, and again related, issue is reducing the overall size of the MFF: that is, limiting the amounts available for the EU's annual budgets over several years, and therefore reducing the UK's contributions.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

239. The City and EMU

Author:
Malcolm Levitt
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
The City of London's leading position in international financial markets is the basis of its central role in the UK economy in terms of its contribution to UK GDP and tax revenue and the City's own balance of payments surplus. The City's prosperity has long been associated with its international role and openness to foreign business, as illustrated eight centuries ago by the Magna Carta.
Topic:
Disaster Relief
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and London

240. The European dividing line in party politics

Author:
Julie Smith
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
European integration is a cross-cutting political issue that has divided British political parties for over half a century. When Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath sought to take Britain into the then Common Market, he relied on the votes of 69 pro-European rebel Labour MPs to get the European Communities Bill through the House of Commons in 1971—an early sign of the divisive impact membership of the European Union would have on British party politics. Barely a decade after accession, the Labour Party had sought to renegotiate the UK's terms of membership, held a referendum on whether the UK should remain in the Common Market, split in part over the issue and finally fought an election in which it called for withdrawal. Fast forward another three decades and the Labour position was broadly pro-European, while Tory rebels, alongside a party established to oppose membership, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), were advocating withdrawal from the Union. And if withdrawal was not the official Conservative position, Euroscepticism has certainly become prevalent in that party, leading one Conservative parliamentarian to claim: 'The dividing line in the Conservative Party is now in/out.'
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, and England